A. Rich - The Hand That Feeds You

Amabile insisted on driving me home. On the back of his bike, as the cold wind seeped through my jacket and pants, I questioned the strength of my suspicions. What did I know? Maybe there wasn’t a connection between the two women’s murders.

And then I thought of a third woman I needed to factor in.

• • •

Steven was against my going. To put it mildly. “How do you know Samantha’s not right and Bennett’s still alive? The police never identified the body.”

“I know it was his body.”

“You were in shock. What if this guy Jimmy Gordon is out there, and you’re about to visit his mother? What if he’s staying with his mother?”

“The Boston PD matched the DNA found on Susan Rorke with the body in my bedroom.”

“Someone is sending Samantha flowers,” Steven said.

“She’s insane. She’s probably sending them to herself.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Can I borrow your car?”

“You don’t know what you might run into. Plus, what if someone is sending flowers to Samantha? I don’t want you to be collateral damage if someone is gaslighting Samantha. Maybe it’s the same person who tricked you into going to Boston.”

“I’m pretty sure that was Samantha.”

“Pretty sure isn’t the same as sure,” Steven said. “What do you expect to learn?”

“What I need to find out is something no one but his mother can tell me: how I fell in love with him.”

“Why do you think she can tell you that?”

“Because she must have loved him, too.”

The nine-hour drive to Rangeley, Maine, gave me too much time to think about what I was headed into. I’d stopped alongside the Androscoggin River to walk for a bit, even in the cold, to try to summon compassion for Bennett’s mother before I got to the Lake House, the bed-and-breakfast she owned.

Rangeley in winter is a quiet, snow-packed small town, nothing like it would have been in summer, with tourists filling the small lodges and covering the lake in kayaks and sailboats.

I didn’t hurry to the Lake House. Bennett’s mother was not expecting me until evening, and I regretted having allowed her to insist that I stay there. When I told her on the phone that I had been engaged to her son, his mother — who had only been told ten days before that her long-missing son was dead — thought that I was calling about coming to his funeral. It was scheduled for this Sunday. I swallowed my surprise at what I had blundered into. I didn’t tell her the real reason I wanted to talk with her. She told me how much it would mean to her to meet me and have me at the service. I found myself relenting in the face of a mother’s wishes. I would use the occasion to find out as much as I could about her son as a child. I would conduct research.

I parked Steven’s used Saab a couple of blocks away and walked past the Lake House. I wanted to size it up before entering. I passed a couple of sporting-goods stores, a homemade-doughnut shop, and a pub with a couple of old men at the bar. Across the street, behind a strip of cafés and a gas station, was Rangeley Lake, iced over in patches, boathouses locked. I assumed his mother’s would be similar to the B&Bs Bennett had taken me to. But instead of lace curtains and lit-candle lamps, the windows of the Lake House were covered with dark shades. While I would not expect window boxes planted with flowers in early December, I was surprised that the flagstone path to the front door was not even marked by small lanterns in the dark. Nothing covered the glass front door, so I could see into the sitting room before I rang the bell. Nothing frilly, just knotty-pine paneling and utilitarian camp furniture.

A wiry, white-haired woman opened the door. “I’m Jimmy’s mother.” From there on, I made myself think of Bennett as “Jimmy.” Renee hugged me, whereas I had offered my hand in greeting. She put a hand to my back to urge me into the warmth of the parlor. She had a pot of water boiling for tea in the kitchen and asked if I’d eaten.

Had I?

“I’ll warm up some chicken soup someone brought over last night. People have been very kind.”

“Thank you.” I thought nothing she could tell me about Jimmy was worth this.

“You’ll have your pick of rooms tonight. I’ll show you the place after dinner. It’ll just be the two of us. Jimmy’s sisters can’t join us.”

Fuck me.

Instinctively, I looked toward the door, gauging an exit. I would rather have had the sisters join us than sit with the grieving mother through dinner. But was she grieving? She moved about the kitchen like an athlete — efficient and deft. She wore no makeup. She was maybe sixty-five, and her white hair was braided down her back. She wore jeans and a turtleneck, topped with a heavy, red plaid overshirt. She must have kept the temperature on the low side to save money, I thought. It was chilly. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her lids puffy, as though she had been crying — over her son’s death, or a lifetime of being wounded by him?

I wandered into the parlor and looked at the framed photos set about the room. Several were shots of what must have been the two daughters as young girls on a rocky beach. With them — a boy. Their brother, Jimmy. The girls are focused on something in the plastic pails they carry, but Jimmy is looking into the camera. I had to be careful not to project what I knew about his later behavior onto this image of a boy who looked to be no more than eight. Even so, his gaze had an intensity that I did not associate with a child.

Another family photo showed his sisters playing with a kitten. Beside it was a photo of the girls, looking no older, playing with a dog. What had happened to the kitten? Jimmy was not in either of these photos. I tried to rein in my worst-case scenarios, but why wasn’t he pictured with their pets? And where was their father? On the mantel was a photo of Jimmy as a teenager, maybe around seventeen. I would have had a crush on him in high school. He wore a leather bomber jacket over a white T-shirt and jeans — the universal bad-boy fashion he had continued to wear for years. His hair was long and he had an attitude; he had potential. I wondered if his mother always displayed the photo, or if she had brought it out when she learned of her son’s death.

Renee called me into the kitchen and asked if I minded eating at the small table there. She said it was warmer because of the stove. I had peeked into the main dining room for guests, and it was dark and uninviting.

Sitting inches from Jimmy’s mother, I was suddenly shy. I was glad that she jumped right in with a question about her son. “Can I ask you something? What was my son like?”

I couldn’t begin to answer that.

“I know, it’s too big a question. But I haven’t known him for twenty years. And here you are.”

The burden was outsize. I had contacted her, I reminded myself. I had sought her out. I owed her an answer. But did I owe her the truth?

“He was charismatic. He was adventurous. He loved Maine.”

“He was here in Maine?”

Anything I might say to her would be loaded, could bring her pain. I told her a white lie. “He only talked about it.” It seemed like a good save.

“Did he talk about his family?”

“Jimmy lived in the moment.”

“Didn’t he.”

I thought she had agreed with me awfully fast. I tried to head off another question for a moment. “What was he like as a boy?”

“He certainly was charming. He could talk his older sisters into anything. He once fixed a homemade parachute and had Vanessa test it by jumping off the roof of the garage. She was lucky she didn’t break a leg, or worse.”

Her tone told me it amused her to recall this event — but only because her daughter had not been hurt.